Spotlight on the economy: Cloudy U.S. jobless claims should clear up soon

The weekly jobless claims report, a proxy for layoffs, has been especially unreliable over the past few months, but it should be return to more normal patterns in the near future.

For the week of Dec. 28 to Jan. 4, initial claims are forecast to drop to 330,000 from a preliminary 339,000 in the prior week, according to economists polled by MarketWatch. That would bring claims back down to the range that prevailed before the beginning of the holiday season and a major computer snafu in California last September that distorted the weekly numbers. The report will be issued at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.

Still, the claims report tends to be quite choppy until the end of January, so another big surprise or two is quite possible. The holidays slow down the processing of claims because of government closures and many people wait longer than usual to file applications for unemployment benefits.

Whatever the case, other labor-market signals point to a pickup in hiring and economists expect another solid employment report on Friday when the government releases job creation figures for December. For now they are giving less weight to the weekly claims report.